Short fiction: Betweenman

Photo credit: Erik Müller/Unsplash

I have good reason to doubt.  There is no power source and the case is bolted shut. If it has moving parts I cannot see any. It has the dimensions of a gramophone player.

I cannot guess his age but his device looks old. When I try to lift it it feels old. The man calls it the escape, although his English is bad and I am sure he means another word. The encased, perhaps.  The tea-scape. 

I say, ‘We put it near the bed, that is that?’

He nods.  There is a blanket across his legs but his arms are bare. He ought to cover them.  No, he should cover all of it: the long, white hair, swept to the side by weather. The brittle face, which makes you think of museums. The awful feet. Despite those he seems ready for a walk, even a long trip, in the way of a much younger man.

I say, ‘Sir, you are telling me I leave it near the bed?  I don’t plug it in or need batteries, and I don’t hear anything at night?’ 

Still no answer. Is it his idea of a test?  If the buyer can put up with momentary quiet, maybe she can bear it for eight hours.

The device is not expensive, a few hundred dollars. I knew I would buy it when I came. I have not slept much in five years. 

He says, ‘It is our last one.  The last we might have.’

‘Can you help me downstairs with it?’

He nods at his legs.  He says, ‘That is not possible.’

*    *    *

My husband does not notice until late, past midnight. We tell friends we go to bed at ten but we never do.  He says, ‘The hell?’

‘Who knows?  It’s supposed to make me sleep in some sort of quiet.  No way it’ll work, right?’

‘I never thought about it.’ 

It is an odd answer, and, within a few minutes, I have an odd dream.  I am piloting a plane, a modern one.  Two seats, so high in altitude the ground is blue, a lacquer of warm ions.  The windows are bright, the sunlight finds its way to my hair. 

In the cockpit and all around, the silence of high atmosphere. There are birds making way, other planes bear in.  Within my reach are controls, alarms and a radio, but they do not make noise.

I open a latch and jump.  

There is no wind at the door, or if there is it is soundless, no bluster or force. When I drop I am as light as flour. As the ground closes in the heat comes.  It is gentle but in time chars my sleeve, where nerve meets elbow.  I pull it away.  I wake.

It is late morning, full daylight out.  I have slept for ten hours.

My toddler, who must have let himself out of the crib, is bedside. He is scared, crying, tugging at my arm, where the heat was. I did not expect synesthesia although it should not surprise me.  With one sense closed off the others act in its place.  In my case the urgency of a boy’s voice, the words I could not hear, became Fahrenheit. 

He says, ’I’m hungry.’

‘Your father!’  I take the boy up but do not have to look around much. I follow the humid air, the plinking of bath water.  

‘In here, love.’ He is two hours late and shivering.  He looks cold but not sick. His arms are like kindling wood, tied in bundles. Left on the ground to soak up winter mist. 

He dislikes our small tub, yet there he is. ‘Been up for an hour.  I can’t get warm.’  I must be a sight to him then, with my red cheeks and sweaty pajamas. 

We try the machine three more nights but every time we do it is the same.  By morning I cannot bear the heat, while my husband is miserably cold, late for work every day.

If our son’s voice makes me warm, what causes the opposite in his father? It takes time to piece it together but when we do, I put the device in the yard.

 *    *    *

I hope the purveyor will meet me at the door, ask about our dreams.  But only his wife is here. She sits the way he did, exposed. 

She says, ‘Come in,’ but I have already let myself in, eye for an eye.

I did not see her last week, and there is another device inside.  He told me the one I bought could have been the last. I say, ‘You’ve found another escape.’

‘People return them sometimes, like you are.’

She already knows.  Good, our haggling will be brief, nor will I ask for the money back.  I say, ‘Is he here? I could use his help bringing it up.’

‘He is away until—’  She clips the sentence short, cutting it off from the unwanted last words.  She did not mean for me to notice.  

She says, ‘He is away, in your part of town.  And me, I cannot help you.  I cannot leave, it is impossible.’ 

There is something in her unshivering complexion that would tell me everything, if my husband’s dreams had not already. I do not ask how she knows, as she puts it, which part of town is our part. It is not as if I told them, nor did they follow, not exactly.  

I do not want to antagonize the woman, and woman is not quite the word.

When I go, I leave it in the street.

fin/fn